


Direct Hit

by DannyCalavera



Series: John Watson's War Stories [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock - Fandom, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: British, Emotional, Gallows Humor, Graphic Description of Corpses, Iraq, Military, Real Life, Reality, War, true story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:21:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25200820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DannyCalavera/pseuds/DannyCalavera
Summary: This actually happened in Iraq 2007.Dr John Watson replaces me in this story.The dialogue is not verbatim, but the general idea of what was said is in here.Comments/Questions/Queries/Complaints welcomeWARNING! EXPLICIT DESCRIPTIONS OF DEATH AND CORPSES DO NOT READ IF TRIGGERED OR EASILY OFFENDED BY SUCH THINGS.
Series: John Watson's War Stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1724839
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For an understanding of what the phalanx guns do and just how eerie the mortar alarm is:
> 
> https://youtu.be/9Gz0LssslcA
> 
> https://youtu.be/gW4AOknNLn0

**Op Telic 11, Iraq 2007**

Captain John Watson was in the office of the Quick Reaction Force ambulance crew checking and signing off the controlled drugs locker. It was his turn as Duty Doctor to check that all the morphine and other specialist medicines were in date, and more importantly, all accounted for. Once he had signed off the last drug in the register, he ambled over to the crew room for a tea. The crew room was a small portacabin with a table, sofa, TV, kitchen and bunks for the night shift crews. There were always four medics and two drivers in the room, they were the ‘5 minute’ and ’10 minute’ crews, so called for how quickly they had to be ready to deploy in an emergency. There was another crew on shift, the ’15 minute’ crew, but as they had a longer response time, they didn’t have to be in the crew room all day. 

“Alright boss?” came the cheery greeting as Watson stepped into the room. “Alright lads” Watson replied. The closeness and extreme situations that were common on an operational tour had leant an air of informality to the officer-soldier dynamic. No one could salute an officer, a fairly old tradition that was there to stop officers from being identified by any watching enemy spies or snipers. The respect was there when it counted but, while there was no fraternising, the formal “Yes Sir, no Sir, three bags full Sir” had been abandoned. 

“I’ve just popped in for a brew” Watson announced to no one in particular and began making himself a cup of tea. Once the tea was in his travel mug, Watson stood and watched a rerun of Jeremy Kyle from the back of the room. There wasn’t anything else to watch as this was the only English language channel available to the British troops in Iraq. Watson stood quietly as the other lads took bets on the situation of the girl on the screen, she was about to receive the DNA results to see if the father of her child was one of the two men sat with her. It turned out to be a third, unmentioned individual that was not on the show with them. As the fight broke out on the screen, howls of uproarious laughter broke out in the room. 

It was through the laughter that the eerie haunting sound of the mortar alarm surrounded them. “For fuck’s sake” one of the medics grumbled as he threw on his helmet and body armour and lay down on the floor. The Mahdi Militia kept a steady routine of attacking the base with mortars and 105mm Chinese artillery shells, 4 to 5 times a day, every day, and through the night. Watson and the other soldiers lay on the floor listening to the soft _crump_ of the impacts far away from anywhere populated, the Militia’s aim was such that many of the British troops found the rocket attacks to be more of a mild annoyance than an actual threat to life. A loud _WHUMP_ shook the soldiers from their idle chatter, much closer than any rocket had been so far. “Fuck me that was close!” one of the prone men shouted. The silence that followed gave way to a sound no one wanted to hear, nor would they ever forget. A whistle, faint but clear, coming from above. 

If you heard a whistle when being attacked by mortars it meant that one was above you, coming straight down. The monstrous roar of the phalanx guns drowned out all other sound. Everyone in the room wished they could somehow be flatter, or just merge with the floor itself. The soldiers all expected to hear the _crunch_ of the shell being shot out of the sky by the mighty phalanx guns but it never came. What came instead was a sound that seemed to Watson like a giant taking a deep breath in, then an earth shattering bang. The shockwave that passed through the building took everything that was on a shelf or table and dumped it on the floor. It knocked the wind out of everyone at once, shifted them 3ft across the floor and left more than a few ears ringing. Through the plexiglass window Watson could see a hideous rain of dirt, rocks and twisted metal. The roof of the portacabin was screeching with the sound of debris clattering down on top of it. 

Despite feeling dizzy and a little bit sick, everyone knew the direction of the blast. This didn’t stop a groaned “Where did that come from?” from one of the dazed soldiers. Even though the question was rhetorical, after a second a grim realisation sank on the recovering troops “Shit!...The civilian accommodation!”. Adrenaline spiked in the ambulance crews and the doctor, the battering they had received by the explosion forgotten in an instant. Everyone scrambled to a low crouch and started gathering up med kits from the floor. Watson took command of the men; 

“Five minute crew, on me!” 

Pointing at the driver Watson barked “As soon as the all clear sounds get your ambulance around to the civilian compound” 

Turning to the medic “Grab a med kit and follow me” 

Nodding to the crew of the 10 minute ambulance, Watson added “Get to the Ops Room and tell the Emergency Department to expect casualties” 

Orders received, Watson ran out of the door. 


	2. Chapter 2

Stepping outside, the air was thick with dust and sand. Watson could barely see in front of him. Moving towards epicentre of the blast, a sight shocked Watson and the medic. A huge ‘V’ had been torn into the 10ft tall Hesco wall separating the compounds. Huge cubes of thick gauge steel mesh and hessian filled with earth and rocks could withstand everything up to a direct hit by a very large calibre weapon. This near impervious barrier lay in ruins, torn fabric and twisted metal bordered the large gap created by the impact and the source of the thick dust swirling around them. Stepping through the breach, the two medics were witness to an equally grisly sight. A white frame of twisted metal rose out of the ground like a giant claw, ruined clothes and mattresses were scattered amongst destroyed personal belongings everywhere they looked, and huge patches of blood soaked into the sand under their feet.

Staying low, Watson carefully approached what  _ was _ the sleeping quarters of the locally employed civilians. The last thing he needed was for the rocket to be still there, unexploded. A quick glance in and Watson saw a black crater just below the ruined floor, no sign of any intact rockets. It was both a good and bad sign that the rocket had detonated, bad that it meant the casualties could be much worse, but good that they didn’t need to evacuate and wait for Bomb Disposal to make the area safe before they could do anything. A shout from the other medic drew Watson’s attention away from the carnage. Stepping through the debris, Watson walked over to where the voice called to him. The dust had begun to settle, and Watson could make out the form of the medic crouched near two civilians sat against the Hesco wall. Both injured men were staring with a dazed look in their eyes, their clothes hung off them in tatters, and their exposed skin was coated in black soot and patches of fresh blood. 

“I found these two sat here” the medic said as Watson crouched behind him “from the look of all the cigarette butts on the floor they must have been having a smoke when the rocket hit. Who knew smoking saves lives?” 

Watson gave a hint of a smile at the dark humour. “Make sure you give them a thorough check over; they might have internal injuries from the blast. I’ll look for more casualties and send them to you if they can walk. This will be our triage and treatment point.” 

The medic nodded and continued checking over the two injured men.

Watson began his search near the wreckage of what used to be a pickup truck. Stepping around the ruined vehicle, Watson’s stomach dropped “Oh Jesus...”

Discarded on the ground was a human torso, intestines trailed out from where the pelvis should be. It was missing both arms, the lower half of the body and the head. The doctor’s eyes followed the direction of the blood and entrails and saw a thigh and half a naked pelvis impaled on a piece of metal ripped from the accommodation, the force of the blast had shredded all of the unfortunate victim’s clothes from their body. By now the dust had settled enough that the scale of the carnage could be seen clearly. The portacabin that housed the civilians had been utterly destroyed. The crater in the middle of the wreckage showed that the rocket had been a direct hit, piercing the roof and detonating in the middle of the room. The impact alone would have instantly killed anyone unfortunate enough to have been inside, the question was, how many had been inside? 

So far Watson had found the remains of one victim, not enough for a complete human, yet. Upon investigating what was left of the bathroom attached to the sleeping quarters, Watson discovered several pieces of a second fatality scattered amongst the debris. As a doctor, John Watson was no stranger to death. As a soldier in a warzone he had witnessed more of it than his peers from medical school ever would. The difference between witnessing the death of a patient passing away in a hospital from illness and a casualty killed by an explosion was stark and visceral. The almost peaceful still image of the person who used to inhabit the body of the terminally ill is in ultimate contrast to the anonymity of the casualty that had met a violent end to weaponry. This violence met Watson as he gazed at the remains spread across the bathroom. The body was a collection of entire limbs separated from the body, unidentifiable chunks of flesh and bone, a discarded shoe with a foot still in it, and individual organs scattered in a way that completely obscured the notion that they once formed a living person.

Watson realised he had just been staring at the carnage when he was brought back to the present by the ‘All Clear’ signal echoing from the loudspeakers across the base. Shortly after, Watson was relieved to see the ambulance pulling into the compound. As Watson walked over to direct the ambulance where to park, he spotted the scattered remains of a third victim spread across the far wall. As he jogged over to where the survivors were being treated, Watson told the medic what he had found. 

“Poor bastards” the medic muttered.

“How are they?” Watson asked, nodding at the two injured. 

“Minor injuries as far as I can tell, I’ve dressed the worst of the wounds, but we will only know the extent of the injuries once they get to the ED.”

“Okay, get them on stretchers and get them out of here. Crash out the 10-minute crew as well, we need to get these bodies bagged up” Watson decided. 

“My Arabic isn’t great, but I think there were only five of them here from what I could get out of these two. They seemed to be pretty out of it.” the medic mentioned as he began preparing the casualties for the stretcher.

“Wouldn’t you be if you had an artillery shell dropped on your head?” Watson asked.

“Fair one” the medic smiled.

Watson watched the ambulance pull away and stood in silence amongst the ruins. After a moment, he tried to find a few bed sheets amongst the wreckage to cover the dead.

Less than five minutes had passed before the next ambulance pulled into the compound. The two medics climbed out whilst the driver turned the vehicle around, one of the medics was carrying a large stack of body bags. 

“Alright gents, we have three bodies to bag up and take to the morgue. These lads were Muslim, so that means it is imperative that we make sure that we leave nothing of theirs behind. Now they were all inside the building when it was hit so needless to say...”

“This will be the world’s worst jigsaw puzzle” the ambulance commander interrupted, dryly.

“Pretty much, yeah” Watson agreed.


	3. Chapter 3

The medical team began the long, unenviable task of locating every single piece of the three dead civilians. Taking great care to ensure that the right limbs and organs belonged to the right body. They laid out three body bags on the ground and began carefully placing the remains inside, making sure the pieces were placed as anatomically correct as possible. They had long since shed their body armour and helmets, and despite the intense heat, Watson made sure they kept their shirt sleeves down to keep as much blood off their own skin as they could. 

After 4 hours of enduring the horrific smell of death, dead flesh in the baking sun and the inner workings of organs that should never meet a functioning nose; the medics had recovered as much of the three dead as they could find. The team were a grisly sight, they were all covered in blood from the chest down. Their uniforms were soaked in it. Even their boots were written off with gore. The medics hadn't lost the contents of their stomachs at all, despite a few horrible instances such as one of the medics picking up a decapitated head only to find the brain still on his boot, and a team effort to retrieve a severed hand from under the wrecked pickup truck. Once the three body bags were loaded into the ambulance, Watson gave the crew instructions to drive them to the morgue at the back of the hospital. He would meet them there, deciding the walk would help clear his head. 

As Watson turned the corner onto the road behind the hospital, he could hear shouting coming from the entrance to the Emergency Department. Getting closer, he saw the ambulance that he had just sent to the morgue. The back was opened, and the two medics were stood, pale faced, as an officer was screaming at them. 

“WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE BODY BAGS IN YOUR AMBULANCE?” the officer roared at the two medics.

“We are taking them to the morgue, sir” the senior medic replied. To his credit, he was looking at the irate officer like he couldn’t give a shit that he was being torn into. 

“You are COMBAT MEDICAL TECHNICIANS; you CAN NOT declare a person dead. So, I will ask again, WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE THREE BODY BAGS IN YOUR AMBULANCE?” 

“Captain Watson told us to go straight to the morgue, sir”

Just as the junior officer was about to launch into another tirade, Watson stepped closer.

“What is the problem here? Why are you berating my medics?” Watson asked, casually.

“I was reminding your medics that as combat medics, they cannot confirm or declare a casualty dead. All casualties must go through the Emergency Department, where a doctor can check and confirm death. So, I was asking them why they had three  _ filled _ body bags in their ambulance and were going directly to the morgue.” the young officer replied, with a hint of  condescension .

“They were sent to the morgue under my orders, and in this instance, let’s just say I trusted their judgement!” Watson snapped back.

A horrified look passed over the officer’s face “They don’t have the equipment or expertise to judge if a person is dead! The casualties could be close to death and be saved by the specialist doctors in the ED!” he sputtered.

Doctor Watson took a deep breath, the two medics hid a smirk as they prepared for what was coming “Well, I AM a doctor, and seeing that YOU are a Second Lieutenant and therefore NOT a doctor, my decision to send these casualties to the morgue trumps yours! These lads have just spent 4 HOURS filling these bags and as you can probably see from our uniform, it was PRETTY FUCKING NASTY! So, to set YOUR mind at ease, how about we go and give these casualties another check? Just in case!” Watson spoke viciously, dragging the officer into the back of the ambulance with him.

Watson unzipped one of the body bags. The young Lieutenant nearly fainted on the spot. He instantly paled as the smell hit him straight in the gut. It took everything in him to stay on his feet as his knees buckled. When the decapitated head threatened to roll out of the bag, the officer wanted to vomit.

“Hmm, now that you mention it, there could be a chance he is still alive.” Watson’s voice dripped in sarcasm. “Shall we get him hooked up to a monitor to confirm? Or is the fact his heart is under his armpit enough?” Watson continued.

The young officer glanced at the two other bags. “Would you believe  it; this one is worse than him!” Watson told the officer, pointing at the bag behind him.

Watson’s face was pure fury at this point “Now I understand protocol, but if you had taken a second to appraise yourself of the FACTS; the ED were well informed that there were three civilians on route who were very much DECEASED! I suggest you think long and hard before you tear into lads who have just spent the last 4 hours doing something that would give lesser men nightmares for life! Now, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS AMBULANCE!” 

The pale Lieutenant nearly sprinted back into the Emergency Department as Watson shut the ambulance doors behind him. He nodded to the two medics who silently climbed into the vehicle and  continued on to their destination. Watson walked over to a corner out of view and squatted down, his back resting against the wall. The adrenaline of the morning dropped out of his system and Watson began to cry. Silent tears flowed down his cheeks as visions of the carnage he had just dealt with swam through his mind. He knew that it was war, but those civilians didn’t deserve what happened to them. Those young medics shouldn't have had to experience what they had just been through. The Mahdi Militia had only succeeded in killing three of their countrymen just trying to earn an honest living, probably to support their families through this chaos. The pointlessness threatened to overwhelm him.

Watson’s attention was drawn to a figure approaching him. He wiped the tears from his eyes and saw the imposing shape of the Quartermaster stood nearby. “Bad day at the office?” the Quartermaster’s accent was a strong Northern Irish. Watson just nodded. “Well, tomorrow is another day. Come on, let’s get you some fresh kit” the Quartermaster spoke softly and began walking away, not looking back to see if the doctor was following.

The pair walked in silence to the stores. The two medics were already there, one was just in his boxers whilst the other looked very silly stood completely naked except for his helmet and body armour. A storeman was pulling brand new uniforms from a shipping container, checking sizes off a clipboard. There was a burn pit with the medic’s bloody uniforms piled in it, the smell of petrol was coming strong from the pit. Watson stripped down to his underwear and threw his ruined kit onto the burn pile with the others. The Quartermaster joined the undressed trio and offered a cigarette to them. The two medics took one  each, but Watson refused. 

“I don’t smoke, Sergeant Major”

“Aye, it’s a terrible habit.” the Quartermaster replied “but after this morning, it will help, trust me”

Watson shrugged and took the offered cigarette. The QM lit all their smokes and his own before lighting the end of a piece of torn cardboard. He threw the cardboard at the pile, igniting the petrol soaked into the discarded clothing. Watson coughed as he got used to the smoke he was inhaling. The rush of nicotine into his system settled his shaking hands and restored a bit of energy to him, bringing him back from near exhaustion. His mind had calmed, and the effect of the adrenaline crash was stopped for the moment. The four soldiers stood in silence as they smoked and watched  their uniforms reduce to ash.

As the flames died, Watson stubbed his cigarette out “Come on lads, let’s get back to work. The war hasn’t stopped on our account”


End file.
